The End of Time
by Attesa
Summary: "Of course I knew the literature veelas could in fact turn into vicious harpies when angered. I knew with the Ministry getting stricter on non-human half-breeds having rights similar to humans that many half-breeds were going to be angered. I didn't realize that it would be the veela that would rise up to kill us all." HPFC Doomsday Challenge. Warnings: death, gore and violence.
1. The Lonely Road

**Title: **The End of Time  
**Pairing:** Focus on Draco/Hermione, with a history of Hermione/Ron and mentions of Ginny/Harry and Astoria/Draco.  
**Rating:** M, for language, character death, gore and violence.  
**Summary:**

**Disclaimer:** These characters are owned by J.K. Rowling. I am making zero money.

**AN: **This is being written for the Doomsday challenge on HPFC. I've got the first three of what should be five chapters written. Deadline is the first of July so this should be completely posted by then. I'll be updating whenever I get the chapters written and beta read.

A very big thank you to my lovely beta: MrsBates93 who made sure that I didn't make anyone out of character or spell everything wrong.

_Chapter One – The Lonely Road_

Warm, lingering air was so humid that it threatened to drown me with every breath that I took. The sun beamed down upon me, warm and comforting. The grass was wet beneath me and freshly trimmed; its aroma penetrating the air. I could hear the river nearby slowly trickling over the rocks and if I weren't so lazy I would go dip my feet in it.

The breeze was stagnant letting the air feebly push the leaves off the trees a few millimetres in each direction, too fickle to decide which way to blow. And I laid on the ground wasting another summer day.

Her hand slips into mine. So soft and thin it's like the touch of an angel musing with mere humans for fun. I clutch it tightly and the soft tinker of her laughter graces my ears. I savour it, suddenly desperate to gaze upon her once more. My eyes fly open and she's gone.

In her place on the bloodied grass is another harpy. Its claws are digging into the flesh of my hand snapping the tendons and bones that once clutched her. I pulled my hand away letting the claws tear through it completely. I cannot feel the pain.

The beak, a stark black and hooked thing covered in blood with bits of flesh still clinging to it stood at the forefront of the monstrous face. Her eyes are human and the most beautiful shade of clear blue that I could ever imagine though they are hardened. The skin is thick and scaled the same as the two vast wings which emerged from the deformed shoulder blades. Her dress, a soft blue fabric encasing her evil soul, was covered in blood in varying shades of crimson.

For a fleeting moment I thought of getting up and running. And then without hesitation I reached for her and her soft blonde curls. I put my other hand on the grass and lift myself into her grasp. Her claws reach around me cradling me to her body and her beak descends upon my neck. Consciously I know that this is it and I look up at the blue of the sky and the perfection of the clouds high above me and wait. A moment seems to stretch out for an hour and the reality dawns upon me. It's not over yet.

I woke with a start, sat up quickly and hit my head on the windowsill.

"Keep it down would you?" Weasley grumbled.

He sat beside the other window keeping a covert look out. I looked down at my watch. Five hours. Potter and Nott were five hours late. My gaze caught on my ring. I rubbed it with my thumb before I caught Granger staring at me. She looked as though she wanted to say something and after two months I knew the look well. I thrust my chin out daring her to mention it, but she simply shook her head and turned away from me. Could it be after all this time she finally understood me? I laughed at myself. Granger could care less.

"Not back yet?"

"There's been no sign of them," Granger said as she slowly began to prepare a meagre breakfast. "On the plus side there haven't been any signs of the harpies either."

I nodded. I pulled a three legged stool over and sat on it so that I could see out the window. The morning was a foggy one, which was why they hadn't spotted a harpy yet. The sun hadn't gained enough strength to be able to peek through the fog and the clouds. I imagined that the snow would come soon and we'd either die from the exposure or starvation. Of course I couldn't rule out the fact that at any moment a harpy could come out of nowhere and rip the flesh from our bones. It is the most popular cause of death as of late.

"We shouldn't have let them go," Weasley lamented. "We should have gone with them."

We'd argued for hours over the same topic and I didn't feel like hashing it out with Weasley again so I kept my mouth shut and tried to relive my dream for a few minutes. Like all of them it faded as quickly as reality came back to me. I couldn't even recall the smell of the roses on the weak summer breeze.

Granger managed to cook up a weak, cool, porridge that we ate while sitting at our prospective windows all watching the fog slowly lift from the buildings of Hogsmeade. For some reason we'd thought Hogwarts could withstand anything short of another invasion by the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord has nothing on rampaging ex-veela harpy bitches. It took them all of three weeks to take out over half of the wizarding population of Britain and a quarter of the muggle population. Their blood thirst could not be quenched however and at the last estimate the harpies had killed nearly seventy-five per-cent of the entire population. It was hopeless.

"What do we do if they don't return?" I ask softly into my now empty bowl of porridge. My stomach threatened to grumble. No matter how undignified it may be I was hungry.

Granger shot me a look and then quickly looked at her husband. Which reminded me, she was no longer really a Granger and I should stop calling her that. Old habits die hard. She waited to see if he was going to blow up in my face or if he had called it quits and gone into another one of his depressed episodes where he threatens to walk out and be harpy bait. I rather hoped for the latter. He continued to eat his porridge apparently entertaining the possibility that his best friend may now be dead as well.

"We can't stay here forever," I try to reason. "We can't eat the books and while they may keep us warm if we burn them we'll die of smoke inhalation. Not to mention the smoke will be a harpy beacon."

Granger nodded as she brought another small spoonful of porridge to her mouth. For the first time in a few days I truly looked at her. She's pale, her eyes seem to be sinking into her face and she's getting thinner at an alarming rate. I regret finishing my porridge, because she looks like she could use just a little more food. I hang my head and then return to staring out the window.

"We have enough food for at least a few more days."

Of near starving rations, I want to add, but don't.

"If they don't return by tonight then we'll have to go out there."

Weasley looks like he wants to protest, but then he stops. He looks back out the window and I imagine he's wishing to some deity that the fog parts and Potter walks up the path a trail of dead harpies behind him like some sort of muggle action hero. A small part of me wanted the same thing just so that this nightmare would end.

For four hours it didn't happen. Then, all at once in the mid-morning light a screech came out of nowhere, a gaggle of human screams and running feet. We were all up on our feet at once. Granger dropped her book and Weasley reached for the door. I crossed in front of him and put my body against the door.

"Wait," I told him. "We don't know who's out there."

"It's Harry!"

"We don't know that."

With baited breath we waited. Nott came into view first, his shirt torn and covered in blood. He was running at full speed and not more than three steps behind him was Potter, a body flung over his shoulder as he too came barreling toward us. I pulled the door open before Weasley could even get out of the way. I stepped on his foot, but he didn't seem to care. Nott and Potter crashed into the tiny store and I slammed the door behind them.

The harpies circled overhead. I could hear their large wings flapping against the breeze, but they didn't dare try to enter the building. One of the blessings of harpies is that they prefer to track their prey out in the open since their wingspan didn't exactly fit through the average doorway.

"Harry? Harry! Are you okay?" Granger shouted, kneeling on the floor next to him.

Potter was kneeling over the body that he had brought in with him. It was a young boy, who was not more than twelve years old and barely breathing. He had been slashed in the stomach, nearly eviscerated and wasn't long for this world before he went to the next. I turned away.

"I'm fine," Potter said through gritted teeth. "Help him!"

Granger busied herself and I could hear her softly whispering spells and words of comfort.

"They're descending on Hogsmeade like it's their fucking nest," Nott said.

He stood behind me, both of us looking at the dead village and ignoring the dying boy. Nott put a hand on my shoulder and for a moment we pretended as though it were acceptable for us to seek comfort in one another. And then it was gone. He let his hand drop and we separated going to different parts of the tiny bookstore.

Granger remained sitting beside the young boy for hours. She wrapped his abdomen in clean white linen bandages that she had transfigured. Each of his smaller wounds she healed with her wand. From my vantage point at the window I watched as she busied herself with his care from cleaning him to comforting him. Weasley sat beside her, a useless puppy refusing to turn away. He moved every time the boy made a ragged breath or a pitiful moan and then he would settle back into his seat watching his wife work.

His strength amazed me. He continued to take laborious breaths and she fed him a small portion of porridge as the rest of us dined on Honeyduke's candy and butterbeer that Potter and Nott had brought back.

"Will he make it?" Potter asked, as the sun began to dip below the tops of the buildings.

Granger remained silent and stoic. She wanted to say no. I could tell. Instead she wiped the boy's mouth as he coughed up some porridge and blood.

"Perhaps we should think of putting him out of his misery," I suggested.

"You mean kill him?" Potter accused.

"Yes. He's not long for this world and he doesn't deserve to suffer."

"He could survive this!"

I wanted to argue that the only thing that separated his organs from spilling out of his stomach was the bandage that Granger had wrapped around him. Instead I shrugged, inwardly cringing at every pained moan and labored breath that the boy made.

"He's right," Granger whispered.

"What?" Ron asked. "Hermione you don't mean that."

"I do, Ron. He's not going to make it and he could go on like this for hours, maybe even a day. He doesn't deserve that. He's in pain."

"Can't we make him comfortable?" Potter asked.

"We don't have any pain relief potions…"

"I could go get some."

"You're not risking your life again just to get a pain relief potion for a dying boy."

"I'm not going to kill him!"

A charged moment of silence hung in the air.

"I will," I said, stepping forward.

Weasley couldn't be bothered to keep the look of contempt and disgust from his face. Potter looked horrified and angry, but Granger simply accepted it without a word. She nodded and handed me her wand.

"Are we really going to murder a boy? Shouldn't this warrant more of a conversation! We're killing a person here," Potter screeched, looking desperately around the room for someone to stop me.

"He's suffering, Harry. Let, Draco put him out of his misery," Hermione whispered.

"He could live through this," Harry murmured weakly as though he saw that without Granger being on his side there was nothing he could do.

"Even if he did," Granger started, "his recovery would be long and complicated. We would be stuck here until he could be moved and even then when we did move he probably wouldn't be able to run. We have no potions for pain or infection. My magic…"

She stopped herself, her frustration getting the better of her. She was flustered, her face flushed as she pushed a clump of hair from her face.

"The magic is in short supply," I finished for her as my own weak magic gave a hum at the thrill of holding a wand again.

"So expending it on an unforgiveable curse is wiser than wasting it on healing him?" Weasley asked.

I wanted so badly to scream at him. His wife, one of three out of the five of us who still had a wand was nearly drained of her magic. The lack of food and water was exhausting her and her magic was suffering. All of our magic was suffering. It had been months since I'd had a wand of my own and weeks since I'd touched one.

"It would be faster, more efficient and yes, wiser," Nott told him bluntly.

"Leave it to _you_to look at this so clinically," Weasley spat.

For a moment Nott's hands balled into fists and his face contorted in rage. In the next he was gone, lost in the bookshelves to mourn.

"Ronald! He lost a child," Granger hissed, shocked and appalled at the way her husband was acting.

"He killed…"

"There was nothing that could be done for her," I whispered furiously. "The harpies took her from his arms and he was left to either let her be tortured or to-"

For a moment we all stopped imagining the difficulty in making the decision to kill someone we loved or let them die so horribly. I remember little Amelia, all of three and a vibrant ball of energy. They'd been in Diagon Alley during the first attack. I shook my head trying to get the image of the girl out.

"He had to," I finished flatly.

"So you vote to kill him, Hermione?" Weasley asked.

I wanted to punch him in the face for putting her in this position. He needed to man up and do the job himself.

"Yes."

"I don't," Weasley said.

"It has to be done," I said.

"I'm with Draco," Nott agreed.

"Harry?" Weasley asked.

"I don't want to kill him," Potter said softly. "But I don't want him to suffer."

Potter was always incapable of making a difficult decision. I shook my head.

"Either way he dies," I reminded them. "Whether we let him suffer or not is the question."

Potter nodded.

"I won't be a part of this," Weasley told us and without looking back he walked away into the bookshelves.

Potter took one last sad look at the boy and then followed after him. Nott and Granger stood by me.

I lowered myself onto the floor and sat cross-legged by the boy's head. I set the wand next to my leg. I lifted his head and put it in my lap, softly stroking his dark hair as his breathing hitched a little and he groaned in pain. Under my breath I hummed a lullaby. His breathing slowed just a little.

"I'm sorry, little one," I murmured, ducking my head so that my lips were next to his ear, "rest in peace."

Granger knelt down and took his hand in hers. She pushed his sweaty matted hair from his forehead before placing a soft kiss to his temple.

I picked up her wand and held it in my hand. For a moment I mourned my wand, my parents, my wife and the child in my lap. My hand shook. I looked into his brown eyes as the tears began to pool. I wiped away his tears with my sleeve.

"Avada Kedavra."

He lay limp in my lap.


	2. Dreaded Fall

**Title**: The End of Time  
**Pairings**: Focus on Draco/Hermione, with a history of Hermione/Ron and mentions of Ginny/Harry and Astoria/Draco.  
**Rating**: M, for language, character death, gore and violence.  
**Summary**: "Of course I knew the literature veelas could in fact turn into vicious harpies when angered. I knew with the Ministry getting stricter on non-human half-breeds having rights similar to humans that many half-breeds were going to be angered. I didn't realize that it would be the veela that would rise up to kill us all." HPFC Doomsday Challenge.

**Warnings**: death, gore and violence.

**Disclaimer**: These characters are owned by J.K. Rowling. I am making zero money.

**AN**: It's been a YEAR!? Umm… I really do have three chapters finished, almost four, but life intervened. I shall attempt to post a chapter a week until this is complete. I shall finish it.

A very big thank you to my lovely beta: MrsBates93.

_Chapter Two–Dreaded Fall_

In the beginning, I thought the whole thing was a joke. Veela were beautiful idiots. Of course I knew the literature they could in fact turn into vicious harpies when angered. They had violent temperaments. I knew with the Ministry getting stricter on non-human half-breeds having rights similar to humans that many half-breeds were going to be angered.

I didn't realize that it would be the veela that would rise up to kill us all.

A few turned. Their features a sharp contrast to their previous beauty. Suddenly, bird-like and vicious they killed the Minister. The aurors killed them in cold blood on the front steps of Azkaban. After all they weren't entirely human.

After that it's impossible to tell when the last Veela became a blood hungry harpy. An entire flock of them entered Diagon Alley one morning. They eviscerated, decapitated and ate whatever human being they came into contact with. It was a blood bath by the time that the aurors got there.

They're remarkably intelligent, the harpies. No longer do they worry about their looks, instead they constantly strategize about how to kill, how to feed this new burning hunger.

I look down at my hands still covered in the boy's blood hours later as we prepare for bed. We are so short on water I don't dare waste it on my hands and I can't bring myself to ask Granger if I could borrow her wand again to scourgify my hands. My wedding ring has caked blood on it as well. I spit on it and wipe it on my pants. It's not perfect. Fuck.

The flock was simply flying over the manor when they landed to rest. Astoria had been standing on the deck watching the clouds and simply breathing in the summer air. One simply picked her up and dragged her away. Her screams caught my attention, but there was nothing I could do. Hopeless. I tried to kill it, but my aim was terrible. When I finally managed to stun it, the monster dropped her from fifty feet in the air to the hard ground below.

I turned away from the window and tried to occupy my thoughts with something else.

Granger is sitting on the stool by Weasley, looking down at the book in her lap, but it's too dark to read. Weasley and Potter are glaring daggers at me. Nott is hidden in the bookshelves. The boy lies on the ground. Nott and I had lifted him up and wrapped him in a blanket. We covered him from head to toe after crossing his tiny arms and closing his eyes.

"Do you think he has a family out there?" Granger asked softly.

We looked toward Potter expectantly, but he shook his head at us.

"By the time we managed to manoeuvre though the blocked roads to get to Honeyduke's night had fallen," Nott began in a soft voice as he slowly came into view from behind a bookshelf. "We were stuck, bunkered down inside Honeyduke's until daylight. At first light we looked outside to see that the harpies were crowded around something and we couldn't tell what it was.

Then, we heard him scream. He'd been hidden behind some barrels and for some reason he just shot out and tried to attack them bare handed. He wasn't in any danger; they weren't even going after him. If he'd have just stayed put-"

"The harpies turned on him so fast," Potter finished for him. "And we had to stop them, but by the time we managed to get out of the shop, grab him and get locked back inside they'd already nearly killed him."

"We waited about an hour to see if he would live or die and for the harpies to go away. Finally, when they did, he was still breathing. We knew how to get back quicker so we just ran for it," Nott finished.

"So that person, the person the harpies killed he may have been related to him?" Hermione asked.

"By the time we actually went outside whoever it was had been so far desecrated that we couldn't even tell if it was male or female," Nott told us. "There wasn't anything left so-"

"So we came back here with him," Potter finished.

Nott nodded and we returned to silence. For the past two months we've sat in alternating periods of silence. Before Hogsmeade we'd all been scattered. Granger and Weasley had left their home after the harpies had attacked it. Nott ran from Diagon Alley to my Manor where we'd stayed until the harpies had found us there. It was such a large place it was impossible to keep secure and we'd been forced to leave. Potter didn't leave his Auror post until the very last moment when the ministry was overrun.

The room fell into silence. I stared out the window at the darkness that lurked around us. I've been trying to piece together in my mind what would become of us. In the end, I imagine, we'll each succumb to death in one way or another. Potter, being an imbecilic hero. Weasley, trying to save Potter. Granger, trying to save Weasley. In the end I imagine Nott and I will simply be caught, alone, with no more resources or hopes of salvation, our magic dwindling to nothing as our bodies begin to use it as a last restitution for survival.

The hopelessness does not disturb me. I've been here before. It's the fact that there is a force out there much worse than what we thought was the worst. I hate being wrong. I hate self-reflection. As I sit against the wall trying to ignore the end of days approaching I manage to drift off to a restless sleep, thankfully.

She's screaming. I sit up quickly, not realizing that I was still just beneath the window. My head smacks against the windowsill. I groan as my hand flies up to my forehead. It's Granger, whose eyes are wide open as she stares at me in the darkness. I quickly turn to look out the window, and thankfully there isn't anything else staring back at me.

"Nightmare," she whispers into the darkness. "I'm sorry to wake you."

I shake my head. It's really not a problem, but I don't want to tell her that. If anything it's a comfort to know that I'm not the only one who has them. I lean back up against the wall and close my eyes. I hear her moving around just a little, trying to get comfortable. I open my eyes just a little to make sure that she's settled in. Her hand is resting against her stomach, stroking it softly, almost lovingly. Her eyes meet mine and she moves her hand quickly to the floor. Fuck.

I can't fall back asleep. My mind is reeling.

Morning comes as the first sliver of light comes through the window. It's weak as it strains to be seen through the fog. Granger is the first to get up and as soon as she does I follow. She walks through the bookshelves to where the new ration of supplies sits waiting to be used.

"You're pregnant," I murmur.

She turns quickly, her face an unreadable mask and a hand cradling her flat stomach. She sputters.

"Are you going to deny it?" I ask.

She shakes her head.

"Does Weasley know?"

Another shake.

"Are you planning on telling him?"

Shake.

"Do you have a plan?"

Tears begin to well up in her eyes. Fuck again. I didn't mean to make her cry. In fact, I should have just let the whole thing go and played stupid. All I saw was a woman holding her very hungry stomach, nothing more. Except I knew that look, that tender touch, and the way in which suddenly a flat stomach is so much more than just an abdomen.

"It's alright," I say, suddenly guilty of making a pregnant woman cry on the brink of extinction.

"Really?" she snapped. "It's really alright? What a fucking load of shit. We're going to die. We're all going to die."

Her hands are on her stomach and I know that she really is talking about all of us and I can't imagine how she feels.

"You have to tell him."

"I don't and neither do you. This will make him act like an idiot. Suddenly, he'll think that we have to do something now and he'll make a rash decision and he'll die. And I can't stand the thought-"

A few more tears drip down her cheeks. I reached around her and began gathering the supplies to make breakfast. I leave her alone, even though a small, nearly non-existent, part of me aches at the thought that she is back there crying alone. I'm not her husband. Her husband groaned a little and gave out a loud snore as I began setting up the small pot for porridge.

She came out of the bookshelves a few moments later after I'd poured just enough water into the pot for porridge. Her eyes are just barely red and puffy, but I can tell. She points her wand at the pot and mutters a little spell. She puts her hand on the pot, and I can tell from her expression that it's cool.

"Let me," I whisper.

I take the wand from her hand and heat the pot of water. Her eyes begin to tear up again.

"It's almost gone," she sighs.

I handed her back her wand and go to the back of the store. From the bag that Nott and Potter brought back I grab a Honeyduke's bar. I return to her and the pot of porridge that she is stirring and hand her the bar. She begins to protest.

"You need to eat."

"I can't, we need to ration."

"Eat it."

I sat down next to her and take the spoon from her hand as she reluctantly begins to eat the candy bar. She breaks off a couple of squares and holds them out for me. I shake my head. She sets them down on my knee.

"Why do you care?" she asks me.

I laugh. Her face hardens.

"Do you think that I'm that horrible that I wouldn't care?"

"No, it's…well…" she struggles to find the right words.

We return to silence. She stares at me expectantly which I find unnerving. Having lived in the presence of a woman, having loved her enough to change myself, I find it hard to harden myself off to Granger's expectant gaze. I hate that.

"She was pregnant," I admit.

The noise Granger makes is halfway between a whimper and a sob.

"Don't," I tell her. "Alright? Just let it go."

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

"We had just found out a couple of weeks before she died. It's not that important really."

Even saying the words it's like I can't even feel the pain. Not a twinge of sadness stirs within me and I know that I've deadened that part of me, at least for a while.

I take the chocolate from my knee and eat one square before passing the other one back to her. She took it without a fight.

The porridge is as usual, a weak and hardly warm gruel. Granger wakes everyone up as I continue to stir the porridge so that it doesn't become cement. I ladle the porridge into the small, mismatched bowls that we have. Everyone gets a scoop of porridge and I set them out with spoons on the floor. We sit in silence and eat.

After we finished and Nott cleaned the dishes, he looked around the small room and said, "We need to get rid of the body," and the silence was broken.

"How?" Potter asked.

"I don't know, but we can't live with a dead body," Nott said.

"Well if Malfoy hadn't killed him we wouldn't be," Weasley spat.

"Ron, he would have died eventually anyway," Granger reminded him.

"So that excuses murder?"

"We aren't debating this again," I said, ending the argument. "It's over and it can't be undone. We need to move forward."

"We could just move him outside," Potter suggested.

"The scavengers will come to the…" Nott hesitated for a moment, "…smell."

My stomach churned at the thought.

"There's the cellar in Hogsmeade," Granger suggested.

"Or," Potter began timidly, "instead of moving the body, we could move."

We all turned to stare at Potter. Granger, glared at him. Weasley, however, looked positively gleeful for the first time in weeks.

"Where would we go?" Granger asked, her voice a pitch higher.

"I'd like to return home," Potter said. "I haven't been there since this all began. Ginny could still be there."

"It's unlikely," Nott told him, his voice very quiet, yet filling the small shop.

Potter turned on him quickly. He didn't have anger in his eyes, just this look that would forever haunt me. It was like he was trapped, unable to keep moving forward unless he went back. He had to know. One way or another, he had to know. I could understand that.

"I have to be sure."

"It's a huge risk," Hermione reminded him. "We can't apparate. We don't have enough wands to go around and we have no idea what is waiting for us."

"I'm not saying we all go," Harry told her.

The air became tense. Nott and I slipped into the bookshelves.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, her voice nearing a screech.

"There were newspapers out there," Nott whispered.

I looked back at him questioningly.

"Old Prophets, maybe the last ones to be printed. They said that the harpies were localized to Britain and that there may be refuge as close as France."

"So we'd have to what cross the entire English Channel?"

"People have swum that before."

"You're right; muggles who are out of their bloody minds have swum that."

"Ron!" Hermione shouted.

The argument on the other side of the store began to heat up and Nott simply turned his back to it. For a moment he stared at the bookshelves before turning back to look at me.

"What if it's true?" He asked, and I could sense the desperation in his voice. "What if France is the answer?"

"Hermione, we have to know. I mean, it's Ginny!" Weasley was shouting now.

"Don't you think I know that? It's dangerous, and for all we know she could be anywhere in Britain."

"Then we have to look," Potter murmured.

"Harry," Granger whispered.

"We could go to France," I agreed, taking a leather bound book from the shelves and turning it in my hands, trying to ignore the other conversation.

"Please, let's just stay," Hermione begged.

I felt as though the thoughts running through her head were being screamed aloud and I wanted to march across the room and simply say it. Granger was pregnant. We were going to France.


End file.
